Aquinnah

Day 1: Chapter 2

The girl paddled, pushing the canoe swift and quick through the water.

Her eyes skimmed the surface until she saw the child's pale form just below the waves, fading into the deep. In one moment, the girl pulled off her tunic and dove in, the shocking cold bringing her back to the present.

The boy was not one of their own. He was a stranger. He meant nothing to her.

But the girl did not think. She just swam head first into the deep, ignoring the icy shock and the burning in her lungs as she swam deeper.

She could not stop now. She could not save herself. Because there he was, fading deeper into the blue.

When she reached his fragile body, floating there, he was light as air. She pulled him close and kicked back to the surface, lungs roaring. When she gasped for a breath, the boy remained unconscious and still. Now on the surface, she struggled to get back into the boat with his limp form in her arms.

Light in the water, on the surface, he was now a burden.

She used all her strength to push the child into the canoe, her heart throbbing with exertion. But she was too weak to pull herself in behind him. She could only manage to pull the boat back towards the mouth of the river from where she came, pushing past the weakening in her arms and legs as she swam.

The child was dead, she was sure. Too much time had passed without a breath. Yet she still pulled the child from the boat and laid him gently along the river's edge.

She pressed against his chest, willing the water from his tiny lungs and pushed her breath into him. Over and over again, she pressed against his chest, watching his tiny face for any sign of life.

But there was none.

Staring up into the blue sky, she said a prayer to her Maker. For only They could change the fate of the boy, and no one else.

She didn't hear the sounds from deep within the forest. Sounds of sprigs and branches cracking under weight. She didn't see the rising mist from a heavy laboured breath, hot and putrid, spiraling between the leaves. She didn't feel the eyes moving across her crouched form, watching her as she listened for the boy's shallow breath.

She focused only on the child, limp and lifeless before her. And in that moment, all she cared about was him.

Suddenly the boy's body began to jerk like a fish on a line. Water spilled between his tiny lips. And with a ragged gasp, his eyes snapped open, a vibrant icy blue.

The girl gasped.

His eyes.

They were so pale, almost translucent.

The paleness of his body and the cold blue of his eyes were unlike anything she had ever seen before. She was afraid, but almost hypnotized by the child. She could not move, only stare.

Their kind was virtually extinct. They had been wiped out after the Great Sickness, shortly after the War of Sorrows. The few that survived were said to live underground in exile. The Elders said they brought disease and death, so they were banished. But Brother Isaiah said they lived underground because the Pale Kind feared the sun. The hot rays created dark lesions on their flesh, and they quickly got sick and died.

But the boy in front of her just looked dirty and scared. He appeared no more than four or five years old, and even though he was thin, his close cropped hair and delicate hands suggested he was well cared for. His body was not bruised or scarred. And his skin was free of diseased lesions. While shirtless, his shorts were made of fine cloth, held across his hips with a clasped button stamped with an insignia. They were clothes from the Time Before.